The True Lies of the Once Fabulous Killjoys

Mikey shifted Lauren out of the way as he ran to look for anything to explain what had happened. He couldn’t see anything inside, but outside told a different story. There was a footprint in the muddy patch below the window, the size of which suggesting that the kidnapper was a male, and as Mikey was pulling his head back in through the window he noticed a few of the spindly branches on the tree by the window were partially detached; it suggested there had been a struggle.

He looked back over to where Lauren remained; she looked shell-shocked and he was sure that it would only be a matter of minutes before the tears came.

“I’ll go tell the others,” he told her. She remained paralysed.

He ran back to living room and shook Bob and Ray violently to wake them. Bob looked about ready to pummel Mikey for intruding on his sleep, but the anxious look on the lanky man’s face told him better of it.

“What?” he asked, fearing the answer.

As Mikey attempted to answer they heard the moment Lauren broke. Her gut wrenched voice, laced with tears, cracked at the end as she screamed her son’s name. It was followed by her violent sobs and sharp intakes of breath as she hyperventilated.

“He’s been taken,” Mikey told Bob and Ray.

The three men reverted back to Benjamin’s bedroom just as Gerard and Frank appeared from within the main bedroom, their appearance dishevelled and Frank pulling Gerard’s shirt over his head. They looked visibly confused but soon worked out what was going on from the look on their friends faces. Inside Benjamin’s bedroom Lauren laid crumpled on the floor, convulsing, screaming in between her sobs. She repeated her son’s name over and over again and asked why he was gone. Mikey, Frank, and Ray knelt beside her and did their best to comfort and reassure her that Benjamin was safe; they uttered words that they didn’t believe themselves. Gerard and Bob took action by looking for clues, anything that would give them some idea what had happened and, more importantly, where Benjamin had gone.

Lauren clutched at Mikey’s shirt as she continued to break. Her already bloodshot brown eyes pleaded with him for answers. All he could do was hold her because he knew nothing.

Gerard hoisted himself out the window and searched the ground for anything. He spent an unsuccessful fifteen minutes outside in the dark with nothing to go off except the footprint that Mikey had already noted. As he attempted to climb back through the open window he lost his footing and fell the short distance to the ground. It was then that he spotted something; it was only tiny, maybe completely unrelated to Benjamin’s disappearance, but it was still something. A crumpled cigarette butt. No one in their group smoked anymore, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be in the vicinity of Benjamin’s bedroom; it had to belong to whoever took Benjamin.

“Bob! I found something!” he shouted to the only one that remained in the bedroom; the other three men had managed to haul Lauren out into the living room. “Get me one of those zip-lock sandwich bags from the kitchen!”

Bob returned a minute later and handed the bag down to Gerard, who was now on his hands and knees looking for anything else obscure. Without touching the butt, he shifted it from the ground into the bag and sealed it.

He put his arm out. “Help me back in.”

Bob yanked Gerard in and took a quick look at what he had found. “So, what do you think happened?”

“Someone with a grudge against us has kidnapped Ben to hurt us.”

“You thinking about the war and all those people we pissed off?” Bob asked as they headed to the living room to rejoin everyone.

“Yep,” Gerard replied.

Bob clapped him on the shoulder. “Me, too.”



Slowly Lauren regained some control over her emotions. Everyone remained silent and she knew that they believed she was silent out of shock, but really she was contemplating how a child could vanish from a small cottage, unnoticed, when there were four ex-Killjoys who were supposed to be watching over him. It made no sense in her mind.

Gerard and Bob had been back for a few minutes and had voiced their findings to the group. They also proposed their theories on what had happened, who had done it, and how. This was when Lauren voiced what she had been thinking.

“Why weren’t you watching him...” she whispered. They all looked at her, not really knowing what to say. “Why!” she yelled at them. “My son is gone and you were meant to be looking after him!”

“Lauren, we – ”

“No! There is no excuse! What were you guys even doing? Gerard? Frank?” The couple looked guiltily at her; they didn’t even have to say they were having sex. “Bob? Ray?”

“We were watching a movie and making out,” Ray replied earnestly.

“But Ben was already in bed when we started,” Bob defended, not one to let his boyfriend take all the blame.

“My son is gone because the people I trusted the most in this world couldn’t refrain from touching each other for a few ours.” Lauren got up and left the room, but not before throwing one last comment over her should. “I never thought I could hate you or be as angry at you as I am right now.”

The men were frozen by her harsh words. They were all blaming themselves now for the fact that Benjamin was missing, and Lauren was right – it was their fault.

They gave Lauren some time before making any attempts to apologise to her. Bob was the brave man who decided to venture up the hall into her bedroom. He knocked on the door before letting himself in, knowing she wouldn’t respond. He found her sitting cross-legged on the bed, her pink and purple ray gun in one hand as she wrote on it in a permanent marker. As she was ignoring his existence anyway, he chose to take a few steps toward her. He read the new inscription on her ray gun – No Love; it was written around her logo, a red heart, on the handle that she was now drawing a cross through. He really hoped she didn’t feel that way about them all for too long.

“Lauren?” No response. “I’m sorry – we all are. Just hear our side of this before you hate us forever.”

She continued to ignore him, but Bob knew she’d be listening to every word he said.

“After you and Mikey left, we all sat in Benjamin’s room and helped him build a city out of blocks – there was nothing suspicious going on – then Ray took him in for his bath at 7 o’clock. We put him to bed twenty minutes later and all read a story to him. We all started watching a DVD once we’d turned the lights out in Ben’s room. Frank and Gerard only stayed for an hour and then they went to the bedroom, but they checked on Ben first; he was still there, asleep, and there was nothing strange going then either. Yes, Ray and I started making out after that, but the TV was turned down – we were still listening out for Ben, but we heard nothing. You came home about an hour later.” Bob touched her arm, thankful that she didn’t pull away. “We did everything we could have done. Whoever did it was incredibly quiet.”

Lauren sighed. “I know in my heart that you guys aren’t to blame... but that doesn’t change the fact that Ben’s gone.”

“We’ll call the police for you.”

“No.” Lauren was adamant. “This isn’t an ordinary kidnapping, I know it... and I think you guys know it, too. It’s got to do with the war... we need to handle it ourselves.”

“Are you saying that you want to be a Killjoy again?”

“I don’t want to, but to get Ben back I know I have to.”

“Okay,” Bob headed for the door. “I’ll go tell the others to get their things together.”

“You guys don’t need to come back to that time,” she called after him.

“Ben’s our kid too, Lauren.”



The news that they would once again become Killjoys was taken surprisingly well by everyone. The only issue they had with the idea was that their Killjoy outfits were back in California, along with their masks and everything else they had used back in the war, apart from their ray guns – those were always carried on their person.

“We won’t look as cool anymore,” Frank joked.

“Actually...” Bob trailed off, as if trying to remember something. “Hold on a moment!”

The blonde man bolted out the front door, taking Mikey’s car keys as he went. He opened the trunk and lifted the false bottom. In the gap where the spare tire should have been was a duffel bag that he had stowed their before they left California. It was left there as a ‘what if’, but he never thought he’d need it, which is why he’d subsequently forgotten its existence. He jogged back to the cottage and opened the duffel bag once he was stood in front of everyone. From the bag he extracted items of clothing, which he threw at the various owners.

“All Killjoys outfits complete and accounted for... well, except Lauren’s; I’ve got no idea where that one went,” Bob told the men.

“Bob, have I ever told you how much I love you?” Ray asked, a massive smile plastered on his face.

Bob looked at him, a serious expression on his face, his voice hopefully. “No, you’ve never told me that you love me.”

“I do,” Ray replied, still smiling, “I love you, Bob Bryar.”

Grinning, Bob said, “I love you, Ray fucking Toro.”

The couple continued to smile at each other, oblivious to the three sets of eyes on them. It was the first time they had actually voiced their love for each other, and despite the drama that they were in the centre of, it felt like it was their moment – and they wanted to cherish it.

“Okay, enough of this lovely-dovey stuff,” Lauren said as she entered the room.

All eyes were on her. She stood , hands on her hips, in her Killjoy outfit; short purple pleated skirt, cropped singlet top, and white stiletto boots. Her pink ray gun sat in the holster on her thigh, her mask rested atop her head.

“Sorry about the ugliness of my scar,” she pointed to her stomach, “Ben was a C-section baby.”

“Don’t worry, scars are badass,” Mikey smiled.

They gathered in a circle on the living room floor and began to discuss possible culprits.

“Hey, Gerard? Pass me that cigarette butt you found earlier,” Lauren asked.

She turned the small butt over in her fingers between the plastic of the zip-lock bag. Fear ignited within her and tears pricked her eyes as it hit her who had taken her son. She composed herself as best as she could before explaining it to her friends.

“This is a Fatima cigarette – they stopped being manufactured over thirty years ago. Getting your hands on these now is almost impossible,” Lauren informed them, “but my ex-boyfriend – Ben’s father – smokes these. He would do anything to hurt me, even if it meant hurting Ben in the process. It had to have been him...”

Mikey pulled her shaking figure into his arms and extracted the bag from her trembling fingers, placing it back on the table. Their mission to get Ben back had just tripled in difficulty.

Bob took in what Lauren said and recalled the information she’d already given him about her ex. He pulled his PDA out of his pocket and, on a hunch, attempted to access the old BL/IND files. To his surprise, his employee number and access codes still worked. Unfortunately, not to his surprise, the BL/IND files had been updated within the past few days. BL/IND was up and running again, and he was willing to bet that the ex-boyfriend was the one behind it all. There was no way that the police could be involved now. It was Draculoids vs. Killjoys once again.

Bob informed everyone of what he just discovered, sending Lauren into another fit of teas and convulsing, and shocking the rest into silence.

Ray waited until Lauren had calmed before asking, “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to New York,” Lauren replied softly. “Ray, you and Frank go to the local outdoor store and get two tents, a few torches, a new set of radios, and anything else there we need that you may see; it’s late, so you’ll need to break in, but make sure you leave some money for the everything. Bob, you stay here and do some more research. Gerard, you stay here too; go through my cupboards and bag up any food that will be easy to preserve – bottle up plenty of water, too. Mikey and I will go to my work and get some things to make up a medical kit. Meet back here in an hour.”

They all nodded their agreement, beginning to move from the floor.

“When do we leave?” Gerard asked.

“As soon as the car’s packed.”